I have come at it from another angle, so maybe it’s useful perspective.
A lot of data pipeline work can function pretty well with each step producing artifacts that the next can consume. If you need unique items, use uuids. If you want to check whether an item exists, use a hash of something (maybe a url). And each day goes in its own subdirectory. It works.
Sometimes, though, you end up reinventing database constructs. Joins, indexing, versioning. A little of that is ok, but it gets gnarly fast. If you mess up, it could mean corrupting your data in a way that’s irreversible. Or, corrupting your data in a way that’s reversible but really hard.
So a database has the benefit of enforcing consistency that a glob over json files doesn’t. It doesn’t mean every one-off script needs a blue-green Postgres DB, but there can be an inflection point.
Knowing nothing about cybersecurity, maybe the question is whether it costs more tokens to go from 32 steps to 33, or to complete the 33rd step? If it’s cheaper to add steps, or if defense is uncorrelated but offense becomes correlated, it’s not as bad as the article makes it seem.
For instance, if failing any step locks you out, your probability of success is p^N, which means it’s functionally impossible with enough layers.
My understanding of defense in depth is that it is a hedge against this. By using multiple uncorrelated layers (e.g. the security guard shouldn’t get sleepier when the bank vault is unlocked) you are transforming a problem of “the defender has to get it right every time” into “the attacker has to get through each of the layers at the same time”.
> They see themselves as the company. Everyone else is a resource
Knowing nothing about how these things work, I wonder if the board will see it the same way? Even today I could see the following play out:
CEO says X. Board member puts a bunch of strategic info into ChatGPT on the spot which argues Y more convincingly than X.
In that moment, the CEO will find themselves arguing against a chatbot, which can gish gallop with plausible bs faster than you can say the word “transformative”.
Maybe they win the argument today, but eventually the CEO will be functionally replaced, and eventually actually replaced or watered down.
Reading between the lines, it seems like they were working with cal.com and used red team bots to find vulnerabilities in cal.com’s code. And they probably found bugs a lot faster than cal.com could fix them. So the CEO balked at the estimated cost of fixing and took his ball home.
This article is effectively an announcement that cal.com is riddled with vulnerabilities, which should be easy to find in an archive of their code.
Alternatively those scanning tools have the same issue all other security scanners have in that they have too many false positives. And when tuning them to have only few false positives, they miss the true positives.
Then the real work is in investigating each false positive. Can still be useful compared to manual review, but requires real resources.
Meanwhile the flood of false positives causes reputation loss if not addressed. Reputation loss that closed source software does not get. Hence perhaps going closed source.
To some extent? But the sliders would probably be even more extreme. If you are 70 years old you’ll probably vote to put everything on Uncle Sam’s credit card and let younger generations deal with it after you’re dead.
It is interesting because in a roundabout way this is essentially asking what taxes are for in the first place. You will probably get some kind of “tyranny of the majority/rich”.
For example, if you have a country on the older side, most people will vote to heavily fund social security at the expense of education. As the demographics change, would be no mechanism to correct the issue. Demographics become destiny.
Similarly, taxes allow rich areas to prop up poor areas of the country. California subsidizes the majority of states for example.
Part of the genius of taxes as a technology is that it allows (forces) a large group of people to coordinate to solve problems that they wouldn’t have otherwise. In the ideal case, it allows smart, forward thinking people to solve collective issues.
> California subsidizes the majority of states for example.
California doesn't pay taxes though, people in California do.
Not trying to be pedantic but this is a common framing that is, at its core, completely incorrect. States don't subsidize states because taxes aren't earmarked based on what state they came out of, it's all just government reallocation of wealth by one means or another.
Even if you were to accept this framing, California's net contribution does not cover the shortfall from 26 states, so the statement would be wrong even if it wasn't deceptive.
The point is that taxes can be allocated to things you do not directly benefit from.
I am aware of the fact that states do not subsidize states, but actually drilling down to the taxpayer level makes the argument even stronger. As long as there are regional differences in benefits from federal funding, you get the same effect.
The farming states benefit disproportionately from farm subsidies. Oil producing states benefit disproportionately from oil subsidies. And states near DC benefit disproportionately from federal bureaucracies.
On principle collective issues can be solved, effectively many pay over 50% taxes (accounting for all taxes) yet not all issues are solved.
One could deduct taxes aren't solving collective issues, otherwise there wouldn't be any given The U.S is the biggest economy in the world yet millions can't even effort decent Healthcare.
> For example, if you have a country on the older side, most people will vote to heavily fund social security at the expense of education
You don't even need a country to be on the older side. Canada's age demographic distribution is normal compared to other countries but since the older population has greater political capital (they donate and vote more), they predominantly benefit from political action at the expense of the younger class. The Liberal party won the previous election in large part by stoking fear in boomers about Trump and the USA, while ignoring issues that the younger generation faces.
In 2015, Canada ranked well above the US and 5th on the World Happiness Report. We now rank 25th. If you break that down by demographics, Canadians over 60 still rank in the top 10, but Canadians under 25 rank 71st. It's the largest gap between the young and the old of all developed nations, and a key indicator of what the priorities of government have resulted in.
Another indicator: For the first time in recorded Canadian history, men over 65 now out-earn men aged 25 to 34. Youth unemployment is ~15%. More than one in five young Canadians is underemployed. Young Canadians under 45 have seen virtually no real income growth since 2000.
The DoD was named such by the act of Congress that established it. The President does not have the authority to rename it, no matter how much he pouts about it.
Touché on the actual renaming, but I kind of prefer “war” anyways. It’s a refreshing removal of euphemisms, of which I believe we have way too many.
If you are on a plane and they announce they are collecting “service items” people might be confused and hand over their “service weapon” if they forget that one means trash and the other means gun. Good thing we have the TSA to prevent this kind of misunderstanding.
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